Pedro Martinez stood up at his own foundation’s gala in Boston on Saturday night and said the thing nobody inside the sport will say on the record. Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1. A lockout starts the next morning. The Hall of Fame pitcher has run out of patience with everybody involved.
“I feel for the fans, and I know when it’s good, and it’s good, baseball is good right now,” Martinez said, per ESPN. “So stop the crap around and get something done and don’t lock out baseball for the fans.”
On how he feels about where this is headed: “honestly speaking, I’m pissed.”
He Has Lived This Before
Martinez was a 22-year-old on the 1994 Montreal Expos, who had the best record in baseball when the players walked out on Aug. 12 of that year. The strike ran 232 days and wiped out 948 games. The World Series was canceled for the first time since 1904, and the following season was cut to 144 games. Montreal never got that team back.
“I might be insignificant, but I lived it before,” he said. “I experienced that before. I was one of the most punished players at that moment because I had talent.”
Then he drew the distinction that actually matters: “Back then, there was a need for other things to change, and they changed for the better. This time, there’s no excuse. On both sides, not the PA, not the owners, not baseball. The fans do not deserve to be mistreated.”
What They Are Fighting About
A salary cap. Ownership wants one and has wanted one all year. The league’s latest offer, made Nov. 3, would push the cap’s start to 2028 and set it at $258.2 million with a floor of $180.2 million. Earlier versions would have started in 2027 at roughly $245 million.
The sweeteners in that offer are not trivial. MLB proposed raising the minimum salary to $1 million in 2027, up from $780,000 this season, growing the pre-arbitration bonus pool from $50 million to $65 million, granting free agency after five years to players who are 30 or older, and scrapping the qualifying offer entirely. The last two were the union’s own proposals.
The union is not moving. “The salary cap is the opposite of competition,” interim executive director Bruce Meyer said before the World Series. “The salary cap tells teams you can’t compete too much. But again, that’s not the reason why they want it.” The MLBPA’s statement in response to the November offer: “MLB owners continue proposing blowing up the current system and replacing it with one designed to line their pockets.”
Commissioner Rob Manfred, speaking in June: “You just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us. And sometimes you’ve got to admit you failed.” Asked whether he shared the fear of a 1994-style stoppage, he said, “Of course I do.”
The Market Already Knows
General managers from all 30 clubs opened their annual meetings Monday at the Aria in Las Vegas, running through Thursday. Roughly 180 players are free agents. Only eight received qualifying offers, down from 13 a year ago, at a record value of $23.15 million. Almost nobody has signed anything.
Giants general manager Zack Minasian described the squeeze without pretending otherwise: “You know that you potentially have only so much time. It’s still not set in stone, but, look, we pride ourselves on being very prepared.” On the state of the market: “Right now, it’s anyone’s guess.”
The 2021-22 lockout ran about 99 days and cost no regular-season games, because the sides settled on March 10 and pushed Opening Day back a week. That is the optimistic precedent. Martinez is pointing at the other one, and he has earned the right to. Dec. 1 is 22 days out, which is not much time to avoid blowing up a sport that just produced a Brewers-Rays World Series as proof of its own parity.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
